Bottleglass

go ahead tread on mesee if I care I am alreadyunhuggable as a cactusand too big to fit on anylap keep your excusesshort or better yet keepthem to yourself anyanimal you live with willeventually eat you orat least want to evenbirds especially birdsit’s not betrayal if they’rehungry or verybored I am hot asbottleglass pulled froma fire my liver can’thandle Tylenol any feveris like a needle prickingthrough my pupils intomy brain I am boilingdown to broth you arefull of spermicide andthe guilt of theconqueror tell mewhat that feels like usingonly verbs then carvemy initials into yourhalo watch medisappear in luxurylike a beautiful name-less planet with threemoons and a dead sun

Kaveh Akbar is the founding editor of Divedapper. His poems appear or are forthcoming in the New Yorker,Poetry, Ploughshares, the American Poetry Review, Tin House, and elsewhere. His debut full-length collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf will be published by Alice James in September 2017; he is also the author of the chapbook Portrait of the Alcoholic (Sibling Rivalry, 2017). The recipient of a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and a Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, Akbar was born in Tehran, Iran, and is a visiting professor of poetry in the Purdue University MFA program.